Do Agricultural Preservation Programs Affect Farmland Conversion?

More than 124 governmental entities concerned about suburban sprawl and farmland loss have implemented farmland preservation programs preserving 1.67 million acres at a cost of $3.723 billion. We ask how effective are these programs in slowing the rate of farmland loss. Using a unique 50-year 269 county panel data set on preservation programs and farmland loss for six Mid-Atlantic States, we employ the propensity score matching method to find strong empirical evidence that these programs have had a statistically significant effect on the rate of farmland loss. Preservation programs on average decrease the rate of farmland loss by 2.4 percentage points; a 33% decrease from the average 5-year rate of 7.31%.